I don’t view this fiasco as a lottery system. This felt like there WAS a way to increase your odds, even if it was by random chance. If you could refresh the page 10,000 times for that 1 in a 1000 chance compared to someone that could only load it ten or twenty times but *could* sit in a queue. So if there was a lottery system, I would really want it to be something tied to Disney accounts (maybe even pre authorize a credit card for a few bucks and only allow that card to be used for one Disney account at a time, etc). You submit you request on Thursday or something, Disney conducts the lottery and emails/allows you to log in and check if you were picked on Monday, and ticket sales start on Tuesday. You must log into your account first and that dumps you into the queue or sales page if you were picked. At 5pm whoever didn’t buy tickets it gets released Wednesday morning as general sales or something. Put an 8 or 12 ticket limit or whatever they decide.
Credit card would help beat the bots a little too, but for the people that use virtual credit or debit card numbers, maybe go to the extreme and say that tickets can ONLY be accessed via the app and there is no way to print them or email or screen shot them or anything (maybe only show the bar code day of event and GPS locked to a mile within Disney or something).
90% of people that would work perfectly fine. You make your Disney account, you add your credit card and Disney verifies it’s real, you do the lottery and buy your ticket. It shows up in the app. You go to the park on the night of and the full ticket shows up and you scan yourself and your kids or whatever.
For the people that bought them for grandparents that don’t use a phone and are meeting you in the park later that evening, any ticket booth can print out physical tickets within 48 hours of the event so you can give them to whoever.
Or for the rare rare case of the person that buys them months in advance and lives hundreds of miles away from Disney and gets sick and wants to give them away, you allow them to call in. They must present the name and address that was used with the credit card to buy them, the date of the event, and maybe their birthdate or something. You charge them $15 to cover the labor and say you will physically mail tickets out approximately 30 days before the day of the event. That information goes in a database and if you notice that person “getting sick” every year and maxing their allowable ticket purchase, or other “suspicious” activities, you block their account from purchasing in the future without some additional pre authorization or something.
There are ways you can cut this stuff down a lot. No one is going to buy on eBay in July and then wait 6-7 weeks for tickets to show up physically in the mail, so that will cut down people wanting to buy them. It’s now a large hassle for someone to sell those tickets, and their funds are tied up for ~3+ months (I think eBay hood funds in escrow until stuff has been sent). But you’ve limited the hassle real people endure.
Then maybe look at increasing prices. I know I’ll be viewed as some horrible monster that is telling the working mother of three that it’s going to be $800 instead of ~$600 if you make each ticket $50 more expensive or something… but people are right, demand clearly is overwhelming at this price point.
Either that or maybe you make a second “tier” of tickets that are $250 or something but include some stupid limited edition lanyard and some special digital gifts or some other low cost way to make it “exclusive.” At least now you’ve keep prices flat, but shifted 20% of available tickets into a much more expensive package that earns you more money, and might keep available tickets around for a few more days or something.
Would be very curious to hear from families with two to four kids… what is your deal breaker price? Would $199/tix make you think twice or stop going? $249? Or do you just cut somewhere else in which case the price doesn’t do a thing for demand…
(I have no children and am usually solo or just +1, so while I value money just like everyone else, my perspective is no where near a family. I’ll buy $460 ticket to
HHN to jump the lines all night and stuff because it’s only $270 more expensive than a normal admission or something. That’s easier to budget, assuming I have the ability for that expense. BUT, if I had to buy FOUR of those, well now we’re talking almost two thousand bucks for one night… that’s a wildly different equation.)
. I wear the badge of "silly" with pride.
